


All Or Nothing At All

by talkingcute



Category: Ocean's (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:55:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingcute/pseuds/talkingcute
Summary: Linus makes a call. It doesn't go as well as he might have hoped.





	All Or Nothing At All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shoshanna Gold (shoshannagold)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoshannagold/gifts).



The job was going great, up until Linus woke up in a darkened room with his hands tied behind his back, forehead pressing a bump the size of a goose egg into the pillow. The tie he wriggled out of in ten minutes—he might have been out of his depth, it turned out, but he wasn’t actually incompetent—and then he lay on his side, gasping for air and trying not to panic. It was like not thinking about pink elephants.

He was in a hotel—bed, side table, TV, the works. Probably the same hotel that the meeting had been at. Dark. Curtains all the way down. Linus pushed himself to his feet, awkwardly, and went hunting for the light switch.

It worked. Linus leaned against the wall, stupid with relief. He wasn’t wearing shoes, he noticed, and decided that could be an urgent problem ten minutes into the future. 

“Don’t ever assume that the other person is smarter than you,” Rusty had told him, the first job they’d ever done together. “I mean it. Hire the best hacker you can, but always check to see if they used their kid’s name as their password.” 

The door was locked, obviously. Linus felt his IQ points go down just turning the handle. When he pulled up the curtains the windows were locked, too, although he could probably have found something in the room to hammer them with. Shame about being fifteen stories up.

The phone, incredibly, worked. For an insane second, Linus thought about 911. He dialed. “Hey, Rusty? It’s Linus,” he said.

There was a long pause from the other end. Then, in a voice Linus would have recognized anywhere: “Sorry, who is this?”

“Danny?” Linus asked, horrified. He’d had Rusty’s number _memorized _.__

__“How the hell did you get our numbers mixed up?” Danny asked. “Wait, did he give you my number instead of his? That’s hilarious.”_ _

__“I’ve used it before,” Linus said. “Wait. Did the two of you switch phones?”_ _

__“What?”_ _

__“Nothing,” Linus said quickly. “Sorry. I have a concussion.”_ _

__“Okay,” Danny said slowly. “I just woke up. No, it’s fine, don’t apologize. I’ll just give you Rusty’s number, and then you can actually have it, and you can call him whenev—“_ _

__“No, wait, this is great,” Linus said. His head was starting to clear a little. “This is way better, actually. Can you drive up from Jersey? I’m in Manhattan and I need an escape hatch.”_ _

__“I’m not in Jersey,” Danny said. “And I’m retired, anyway. Give me a little respect.”_ _

__“You’re retired?” Linus said._ _

__“There was a party, Linus,” Danny said. “Remember, with the cake and the streamers?”_ _

__There had been a party. Linus had gone to it, even, mostly because Saul had called all of them up and put the big guilt on all of them about it; also, he had assumed that Danny was using the party as an excuse to get the crew in the same room again for a new job, which he hadn’t been. It had just been a party. The cake had been pretty good._ _

__“You have to stop retiring, man,” Linus said. “People aren’t taking you seriously.”_ _

__“I think most people take me pretty seriously, actually,” Danny said. “And it was Rusty’s retirement, too, come to think of it. His first one. Big milestone. Where’s the respect for that, huh?”_ _

__“I’m not asking you to do a job,” Linus said, though, actually—“I just need someone to walk through the front door with an FBI badge and a warrant for my arrest.” Silence from the other end of the line. “Or a bomb squad,” Linus said. “Or Interpol. Or—wait, you’re not in Jersey?“_ _

__“Did I mention that? I wasn’t sure.”_ _

__“Where are you?” Linus demanded. “Sorry. Sorry, I just, I don’t know if I’m wasting my minutes here.”_ _

__He heard Danny sigh exaggeratedly. “Well, why don’t you tell me about it,” he said. “Whole story, chop-chop.”_ _

__Linus did, trying to trim down most of the extraneous details as much as possible to keep from over-extending Danny’s patience. Most of the stuff that made him look bad fit in that category, anyway._ _

__“So, a Monarch, but with both wings cut off,” was Danny’s verdict._ _

__Linus waited hopefully through the dramatic pause._ _

__“Does the bed still have sheets? Yeah, stupid question. Okay, sheets, window, they’re asking for it. You’re gonna have to rip them with your teeth, sorry. The trick is—“_ _

__“Are you fucking kidding me?”_ _

__“The trick is to braid the strands, not just tie them,” Danny said smoothly. Linus wanted to kill him. “It strengthens the rope. Less chance of breakage.”_ _

__“I mentioned being thirty floors up. I remember—“_ _

__There was a murmur from Danny’s side. “Shh,” Danny said, and Linus shut up automatically. He heard blurred conversation, and then: “Turns out some people are trying to sleep here,” Danny said. “Anyway, don’t turn your nose up at a guaranteed escape route. It worked for Abe Reles, remember. Kid Twist himself!”_ _

__“I think he died,” Linus said, extremely calmly._ _

__“Well, the linen industry has a lot more regulations now than it did in the thirties.” More muffled conversation. “Sorry, 1941. And he was thrown out of the window, so you can’t even take it as a bad omen. Rope ladder would’ve worked fine if he just had the chance to use it.”_ _

__“That was absolutely more than I ever wanted to know about your pillow talk,” Linus said. “Also, I changed my mind. I want to talk to Rusty now.”_ _

__“Tough luck, kid. My phone, my speech.” Linus sighed gustily; he always forgot how being on Ocean’s crew always made him feel like somebody’s little brother. “Listen. Pulling a job is like opening an umbrella. It looks great at the beginning, it looks great at the end, but for most of it, it’s just a mess of wire and bunched-up fabric.”_ _

__“How fucking long does it take you to open an umbrella?”_ _

__“I don’t own an umbrella. What the hell would I do with an umbrella? It’s metaphorical, Caldwell. Pay attention.” Pause for effect; Danny could’ve taught that at Julliard. “You are not kidnapped,” Danny said. “There is absolutely no one on Earth who would kidnap you and give you a working phone. Are they listening to us right now? Probably, which is why I’m hoping you gave them your real name to begin with. This is the hard sell, kid, and you’re going to have to decide whether to ante up or cut and run.”_ _

__“Are you actually out of town, or were you making that up to avoid getting out of bed?” Linus asked._ _

__“I’m out of town,” Danny said. “Actually, I’m—I’m not sure where I am, as a matter of fact. Little bit of mystery in this situation.”_ _

__“You’re kidding,” Linus said._ _

__“I swear, I’m not. Well, I know I’m in a hotel—nice big bed, beautiful view. There’s a coincidence, huh? Probably not the same hotel, though, since you’re in New York, and the stationary on the table next to me has writing on it in Portuguese. You know what, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Portugal.”_ _

__“Brazil,” Rusty said, so clearly that he must have been speaking practically into the receiver. Linus almost choked on his tongue._ _

__“Thank you, Rusty,” Danny said. “So, somewhere in the biggest country in South America. I hope it was Rio, I liked Rio the last time I went there. Uh, penny for your thoughts, Linus?”_ _

__Linus wasn’t even surprised. Well, he was somewhat surprised, but also unsurprised, on a deeper level. He’d pencil in the time to be surprised: sometime next month, in between lying on the beach and counting up his money. He was hoping for a cool seventy-five cents._ _

__“You had a joint retirement party,” Linus said. “Was that a clue? Am I really terrible at picking up clues?”_ _

__“Signs point to maybe,” Danny said. “Hey, you know what I realized? You do have Rusty’s number. We must have switched phones. Worked our way from one side of the bed to the other. Switched—“_ _

__“Stop.”_ _

__“Fine. How did you get into this situation, anyway? You kind of avoided that part in describing how the job you planned went so far south.”_ _

__“I didn’t avoid anything,” Linus said, with dignity. “And it wasn’t my job, I joined as a favor.”_ _

__“I get it,” Danny said. “I really do. Was she pretty? From me to you, kid, always take that as a bad omen. Never trust it. They end up using it as a crutch, every time.”_ _

__Linus said, “Worked out fine for you.”_ _

__Pause. “Yeah, well,” Danny said. “There are always exceptions—okay, Rusty wants to talk now.”_ _

__“Rusty? Thank God,” Linus said. “Listen, I need you to get—“_ _

__“Linus,” Rusty said._ _

__“Yeah?”_ _

__“Linus. Call your mother.”_ _

__Distantly, Linus could hear Danny: “That’s great advice. Hey, why didn’t I think of—“_ _

__The line went dead. Well, good for them, Linus thought, grimly. Give him a month of not being kidnapped, and he’d find them something at Williams-Sonoma._ _

__There was a deck of cards in the drawer, right on top of the Gideon Bible. Linus settled himself on the bed, cross-legged, and started laying them out for solitaire. He wondered if the TV still worked. He’d give the situation another ten minutes before making the second call. Not too long; just enough to see how the hand was going to play out._ _


End file.
